ound all sorts of
little friendly things to watch and think over. Sometimes a school
of porpoises; or a line of little murrs flying; or a sail far to the
south, making for the Channel. And sometimes, towards evening, the
fishing-boats would come out and drop anchor a mile and a half to
south'ard, down sail, and hang out their riding lights; and we knew
that they took their mark from us, and that gave a sociable feeling.

On clear afternoons, too, by swarming up the mast just beneath the
cage, I could see the Islands away in the east, with the sun on their
cliffs; and home wasn't so far off, after all. The town itself,
which lay low down on the shore, we could never spy, but glimpsed the
lights of it now and then, after sunset. These always flickered a
great deal, because of the waves, like little hills of water, bobbing
between them and us. And always we had the Lighthouse for company.
In daytime, through the glass, we could watch the keepers walking
about in the iron gallery round the top: and all night through there
it was beckoning to us with its three white flashes every minute.
No, we weren't exactly gay out there, and sometimes we made wild
weather of it. Yet we did pretty well; except for the fogs, when our
arms ached with keeping the gong going.

But if we were comfortable then, you should have seen us at the end
of our two months, when the boat came off with the relief, and took
us on shore. John and Robert Pendlurian were the names of the
relief; brothers they were, oldsters of about fifty-five and fifty;
and John Pendlurian, the elder, a widow-man same as my father, but
with a daughter at home. Living in the Islands, of course I'd known
Bathsheba ever since we'd sat in infant-school; and what more natural
than to ask after her health, along with the other news? But Old
John got to look sly and wink at my father when we came to this
question, out of the hundred others. And the other two would take it
up and wink back solemn as mummers. I never lost my temper with the
old idiots: 'twasn't worth while.

But the treat of all was to set foot on the quay-steps, and the
people crowding round and shaking your hand and chattering; and
everything ashore going on just as you'd left it, and you not wishing
it other, and everybody glad to see you all the same; and the smell
of the gardens and the stinking fish at the quay-corner--you might
choose between them, but home was in both; and the nets drying; and